Case Study · AutoScout24 · Search & Discovery
Declutter the List Page
Across a multi-phase programme, I led the design work to simplify AutoScout24's list-page card across web and app. The work improved browsing clarity, gave teams a stronger basis for rollout decisions, and showed where web and native apps needed different treatments. The harder challenge was not removing UI alone, but deciding which buyer, commercial, and platform needs deserved limited card space.
- Outcome
- Measured uplift in buyer progression and enquiry signals
- Company
- AutoScout24
- Role
- Senior Product Designer to Principal Product Designer
- Scope
- mWeb, desktop, iOS, Android
Overview
A list card redesign aimed at faster decisions
This was a decision-quality problem in the search funnel, not a visual tidy-up. Research and behavioural analysis pointed to a commercially meaningful issue: buyers were working too hard to scan, compare, and decide which offers deserved a closer look.
Early research pointed to the same pattern from multiple angles: too many elements competing for attention, unclear hierarchy, and weak visual cues for what deserved a closer look.
The list page still had to do three jobs well: make it clear that users were browsing a list, signal that opening a card was the route to richer detail, and provide enough context to compare offers quickly.
In practice, that meant reducing information density, showing more offers above the fold, clarifying what the image area signalled, and later reworking commercial entry points rather than letting every internal demand stay equally prominent.
Visual Proof
The desktop card made the hierarchy shift obvious
Once the problem is clear, the desktop compare makes the core move easy to see: less noise, clearer scanability, and a more disciplined balance between product signals and commercial surfaces.
Before
After
Strategic Context
This work sat inside a broader buyer reset
The list-card redesign mattered partly because it was one downstream expression of a wider effort to improve how buyers moved from search results to confident decisions.
This work did not start as an isolated card cleanup. It sat inside a broader buyer-side effort to improve guidance, selection, and trust across search and decision-making surfaces. That context helped clarify why the list page mattered so much: if buyers could not scan, compare, and progress confidently from results, improvements elsewhere in the journey would have limited effect.
For this case study, I am not treating that broader work as the main story. I am including it only as context for why simplifying the list card became an important product decision, not just a visual one.
Why This Mattered
This was a marketplace prioritisation problem
A small change on the list card could move much more than aesthetics.
- The list card shapes what buyers notice, what they open, and how quickly they can compare offers.
- It also sits upstream of high-value browsing, enquiry, and commercial entry points.
- Multiple teams had legitimate claims on limited card space, so simplification meant deprioritising something.
- That made the work a marketplace prioritisation problem: decide what the card most needed to do, then defend those choices with evidence.
My Role
What I directly drove, and what stayed shared
My role was to lead the design problem across multiple phases: clarify what the card should optimise for, validate the riskiest tradeoffs, and help turn repeated findings into a rollout direction.
What I directly drove
- Reframed the brief from visual clutter to decision quality on the list page
- Led concept exploration and validation planning across information density, commercial entry points, and image behaviour
- Translated research and measurement signals into concrete web and app recommendations
- Supported delivery, QA, and rollout decisions with product and engineering partners
What stayed shared
- Worked with product and analytics to evaluate tradeoffs across browsing progression, enquiry quality, and commercial surfaces
- Helped challenge proxy engagement signals when they did not reflect meaningful progression
- Engineering, analytics, and rollout partners owned implementation, deeper analysis, and operational rollout
Key Decisions
The most important calls were about evidence and priorities
What made the work consequential was not a cleaner layout on its own. It was deciding what evidence to trust and what the card should prioritise on each platform.
Back the stronger simplification
Early validation showed the more reduced direction was worth pursuing. That shifted the discussion from visual preference to product judgment: how far could we simplify the card while preserving the signals buyers and the business still needed?
Treat commercial entry points as product tradeoffs
Once declutter helped core browsing signals, the harder question became how much space adjacent commercial surfaces should keep. The card could not optimise every buyer and business need equally, so each entry point had to earn its prominence.
Trust actual progression over flattering proxies
Follow-up validation exposed a measurement trap: richer on-card interaction could make engagement look healthier without clearly improving meaningful progression. That changed the decision from 'this feels richer' to 'which measure best reflects real buyer progress?'
Let platforms diverge when the evidence diverged
The programme did not support one universal card. Web and native apps needed different balances of image emphasis, detail, and action density while still following the same product principles.
Platform Divergence
Apps kept a different balance of imagery and information
The programme did not end with one universal card. The app direction retained a different mix of image emphasis and details, which is why it belongs next to the platform-divergence story rather than at the top of the case study.
Before
After
Outcome / Impact
What the evidence supports
The clearest honest landing is that stronger declutter produced positive validation signals, follow-up analysis clarified where simpler web behaviour was safer, and the programme ultimately landed as a platform-specific rollout rather than one universal winner.
Measured signal
Measured uplift
the more reduced direction outperformed the earlier card
Early validation gave the team confidence to keep pushing the simpler direction while continuing to validate the commercial tradeoffs around the card.
Decision quality
Progression signal
follow-up validation favoured a simpler web treatment
Later analysis showed that richer on-card interaction could look healthy in proxy metrics without clearly improving meaningful progression. That pushed the team toward a simpler web approach and a different app balance.
Final state
The list-card approach was rolled out across markets and platforms
The programme ended with a platform-specific list-card direction across web and native apps. It rolled out across multiple markets and platforms, giving AutoScout24 a cleaner and more scalable foundation for results browsing without pretending one card pattern should serve every surface equally.
Mobile Web
The same declutter logic had to hold up in tighter space
On mobile web, the challenge was not only reducing clutter but deciding which signals deserved the limited space. The reduced card made the key comparison cues easier to read without treating every element as equally important.
Before
After
Reflection
What this project clarified
Simplification only held up when the team was explicit about what the card should optimise for.
The most useful lesson was that high-traffic marketplace surfaces do not get simpler by removing elements alone. They improve when the team is clear about the decision the surface needs to support, uses the right measures to judge progress, and lets platforms diverge when the tradeoffs genuinely differ.
